Saturday

A few hours ago, TechCrunch posted this video that one of their readers had sent in. The boy in it is four. He's mastered the basic functions of the iPad and if you think this is the only kid in the world who can operate the tablet, you're wrong. Most can.

No more mouse. No more clunky, challenging operating systems. This little guy is being raised with the expectation that every screen can be touched and interacted with.

Clay Shirky tells a great story at the close of Cognitive Surplus about a friends daughter. The friend is watching a DVD with his daughter on the couch. At one point, she stands up and walks over to the TV. The goes behind the TV and looks at the cords. Then she walks in front and starts looking around the boarder of the TV. She's looking for something but her Dad isn't sure what. So he asks, 'What are you looking for?'

And she simply turns, looks at him and replies, "The Mouse".

Could this kid operate your experience? Or even understand the basics of it?

Wednesday

One of the areas that I've been thinking a lot about lately is how clients, brands and marketers really know if the people giving them digital advice, knowledge, experiences and ideas are, well, credible.

We all use best in class cases to help show clients (and ourselves) strategies that have been successful. And most digital people know the top examples off by heart:

As a planner, I obsess over examples. In fact, reading the trades and seeing what other people are doing (and learning from their successes and failures) is something that, believe it or not, a lot of people fail to do.

Evaluating the cases in your own arsenal, based on the work that you've directed, can be humbling. For every Old Spice video there are 1,000 others with less than a couple hundred views. For every crowdsourcing success, there are hundreds of other (well-built, well-planned) experiences that nobody knows about.

Examples help us learn and plan. But until you've launched and failed (or, in the lucky event, succeeded), their just that - examples.

This mentality, I think, helps to explain why many social 'experts' focus on their own numbers.

'I have 80,000 followers, therefore, I know a thing or two about Twitter. Trust me.'

That's fair enough. But I don't think many clients have asked Kim to help them with their social strategies or turned to Brooke and asked her about how to optimise their content streams. (beyond the product placement here and there).

I joke - but do concede that large followings do show something. That you have a large number of followers. And that something about your stream has attracted them. Nice work.

But when you throw away external examples and personal ones and look at the ones that you've helped real brands / clients / agencies with, how do things shape up? It's OK to fail (it's really the only way to learn) but don't repeat the same mistake(s) over...especially with the same people.

Want to show someone that you can help others succeed in digital? Prove it.